Still
by Maeve Riannon
Summary: This story is part of my AU where Tomoe survives her brush with death. Our dear lady broods in the solitude of the inn, in the chaos of the Bakumatsu, and the arrival of the man she loves starts again the routine of silent, suffocating misunderstandings.


**Note: **Well, what can I say? It was the comment of a reviewer, supernaturalove, what prompted me to do it this time. It´s a peep inside Tomoe´s mind about three weeks after Kenshin and her returned from Otsu to Kyoto, and it goes with my AU where Tomoe survived, of course. Any suggestion is very much appreciated.

Disclaimer: The characters belong to Watsuki.

**Still  (1865)**

"Tomoe-chan..."

The silent figure sitting at the fireside suppressed a flinch. Slowly, she turned back towards the source of the voice, and the innkeeper had to wince when she met that pair of hollow and sleepy eyes.

"Well, if you're staying here I´m… going to bed." she said with some hesitation. "But… are you sure you can stay awake?"

"Yes," the younger woman nodded. "I will."

The innkeeper still did not move.

"He can return really late." she insisted. Somehow, she had the feeling that this strange, sad and aloof woman wouldn't even listen to her, as all the other times, but she felt it was her duty nevertheless to try once more. "I'm old, and used to wait for people who do not return when they said they would."

"I am, too."

Her voice had been so soft, so eerie, that the old woman could not help shivering. Deeply uneasy, she mumbled a "good night", and hurried to her room without caring for the answer.

Tomoe lowered her head, and rocked herself back into her musings.

*     *     *     *     *

_"I still want to protect your happiness."_

Hopeful words, those ones. Full of love, and of faith, because they implied that all which had happened on that terrible day could be reduced to a simple added word in a pledge of the past. They had completely banished the last thoughts of suicide from her hurting mind, and convinced her to honour her own pledge and that man whom she had forgiven but betrayed.

_That man whom she loved._

It was not cowardice, but love, the reason why she hadn't been able to kill herself that horrible morning to begin with. He had been there, lying on the snow at her feet and gravely wounded in spirit and body because of her, so how could she have deserted him? How could she have deserted the man who had sworn to give her back her happiness, before even knowing that it had been him who had taken it away?

Unwittingly… 

_I love him. That's all._

She had surprised herself even more than what she had surprised her brother that day, speaking so vehemently about her own feelings. Never ever in her life had she spoken her mind, and she had been astounded at how _freed _she felt for once. Once her brother out of the way, and Kenshin under any villager´s care, she could end her life in peace, but not without having, at last, confessed the whole truth and tied the last loose strings. Her old love had forgiven her, and her new one was saved. There was nothing else to be found, nothing else to be attained. It was over… at last.

Still, the first day she was going to search for the villagers, she had suddenly been afraid that he would get worse while she was away. In the afternoon, as he had started to move more in bed and she had needed to change his bandages, she had spent whole hours watching his agitated sleep, in compassion and fascination. And at night, in anguish, he had called her name.

_One day more…_

First, it had been one, then two, then three, as Kenshin´s state underwent different stages. There had always been a reason not to go, a reason to continue taking care of him. And finally, when he had regained consciousness, and she had been able to look into deep, hurt and perfectly aware violet eyes, she had known that she would never leave that place unless he wanted her to.

What was there to lose? She had no honour. Her life had no worth; she had cut ties with her family and betrayed both men she had been bound to. Worse; her revenge scheme had been nothing but the desperate need of a heroic self-sacrifice to wash away the unbearable feeling of guilt she had been drowning in after Kiyosato's death, and, in the end, the only truth that remained was that by acting whenever she should have done nothing, and staying silent whenever she should have talked, she had harmed everybody she loved.

_Honour was pride_. Sacrificing herself was pride. Suppressing her true emotions was pride, even deciding about her own life was pride right now. And she had no right to pride anymore.

She was nothing.

_Cold…_

Tomoe opened her eyes in alert, only to discover, to her dismay, that she had fallen asleep for seconds. The flames had subsided to a soft glowing red ember by now, and she was shivering from head to toe. With a shake of her head, she started to get up in order to revive them. 

_He still hadn´t arrived…_

Feeling a powerful laxity make prey of her limbs at the simple thought, the woman lay back with a bitter smile, crossing her arms over her breast. It was to be her penance for months, for years, until the disorders ceased. Would she be able to stand it? It was only about three weeks since they had returned to Kyoto, and she was already exhausted.

_Tomoe, you have always been strong…_she chided herself almost at soon as those thoughts appeared in her mind. _Out of repentance and loyalty, he will finish what he started, and so will you._

They were now back in the city she hated so much, in the middle of the rain of blood and the incessant dripping of murders and corpses every night. Kenshin was now fighting in front line, and protecting the Ishin Shishi operations from the chase they were being subjected to by the Shinsen-gumi. He wasn´t a shadow hitokiri anymore, and he was starting to become famous, so they couldn´t risk the slightest evidence that they were married because of the fear that she would be tracked. They didn´t have a home, and they scarcely had a room. Worse, since he was paranoid about her safety, and his superiors about his mental state, she couldn´t even leave the place, or even be alone. She felt suffocated, threatened everywhere.

And, _even _worse…

Tomoe threw another lingering glimpse at the closed door, and slumped back in resignation. Still not there… She didn´t even know where he had gone, for she would cut him whenever he tried to explain her as much as he was allowed to. All he had to do was to be careful, not to risk his life unnecessarily and, please, come back safe. She would give him her violet silk scarf, Kiyosato´s posthumous gift, and stayed there at the fireplace, her eyes fixed in the flames while she felt the numbness and the void inside.

_Well_, she mused sadly. _At least, I have learned to encourage them to return…_

She couldn't deny that either; somehow, he always did everything in his hands to come back as soon as he could. Though his returns were a turmoil of joyful and painful sensations within her heart, she…

_Uh?_

All of a sudden, she was able to hear a knock that came from the door, soft but intently shattering her thoughts. Two… three knocks, breaking the oppressive calm of the inn at night, and as soon as she had heard the third, she got up fuelled by some resort, and hurried to open it with a loudly beating heart.

"I'm back," Kenshin muttered, walking past her. He sounded weary and dishevelled, and there were angry spots of blood - not his, she remarked in a strange kind of painful relief -, on his haori and hakama. As her eyes fell upon his face, she could not help feeling ashamed for calling what she felt exhaustion, for, though maybe for others he would look rather cold, for her he looked as if he had been gravely wounded without having even been touched.

Yet another night…

"Take away your bloodied clothes," she instructed, walking towards the kitchen where she had left a bucket of water. He followed her in silence, and the only sounds she could hear behind her were the katana and the wakizashi softly bumping together. While she prepared the water he needed to wash his hands and his face, he took his haori away, then his hakama, and handed them to her without a shiver. As she had already noticed on other occasions, he didn´t seem to feel the cold, even standing just with his kimono in a winter night and with his hands in a basin of freezing water.

"I'm glad you're back," Tomoe muttered in a hushed voice. Kenshin splashed his face, and closed his eyes.

"I'm not going to die any night, Tomoe," he said, before splashing himself all over again. The woman nodded, quietly noticing the difference to that other time when he had told her that he didn't expect to live much longer. Of course, he had said it himself, after all.  "_I still want to protect your happiness,"_ had been his words, and he never said something if he didn't mean it. The spark that had been born in Otsu still survived. She _should _be happy because of it.

_But…_

"You need any of those for tomorrow?" she asked, dripping the bloodied clothes in the washtub without even the slightest wince. 

 "The haori," he answered. And then, in a softer voice that almost didn't reach her ears, "Thank you."

For a while, time passed in silence for both, intently focused in their tasks; she washing the garment and he washing his hands and face. As always, in spite of the obvious difference between the two, it was she who ended first, and he the one who stayed there even long before she was gone to hang the haori outside, still scrubbing his hands raw.

"You can…You can go to bed, if you want," he told her, pausing for a moment to face the silent presence waiting for him at the door. Tomoe acquiesced and left without a comment, acutely conscious that she was making him feel uncomfortable. Suppressing a shiver of cold, she lit a candle and climbed upstairs, while she tried to concentrate in not making a noise that could wake up the people who were sleeping.

How she pitied him… And, the most curious of all, she realised that she had pitied him also _before_, when they hadn't had left for Otsu yet. Every time that she thought about it, she couldn't believe that she had ever been able to fool herself into thinking that her scheme would work without tearing everything apart. How could she have been so blind?

_Or voluntarily blinded…?_

Enough!

Closing and opening her eyes in a vigorous move, Tomoe chased that determinate brand of torment from her mind, and tried to just apply herself to the task of preparing and unrolling her futon. To think that one day her heart had beaten in fear at the very thought that he would bed her and soil her even more, beyond repair…

Sometimes, she felt as if she might as well cry, as she had learned to do in Otsu for the first time in such a long while. Free herself. It felt so good…

"Tomoe." Sudden, unexpected, the voice managed to startle her somewhat, and she discovered that she had been in the same pose for some time. Of course, she hadn't heard him come, as so many people before.

"It´s… It´s cold." she pointed out lamely, at the same time trying to hide the desperate plea in her eyes. Kenshin ignored it, though, maybe because she usually managed to hide whatever she wanted, even if she didn't want it in truth….

_Or maybe because he just… didn't care?_

 "Good night." He passed by her side without hesitation, and, without changing his kimono, knelt in the opposite corner to prop his wakizashi against the wall. As he sat down himself, clutching his katana, Tomoe felt the anguish of every night coming back to her in a rush. 

She wanted to say something. She wanted to ask, to _plead_ for an answer. It was not dignified, but did she have any dignity left after all she had done? Wasn't she… nothing, a cold void trembling in an empty bed?

_Why didn´t she ever ask in spite of all this?_

Fuelled by these determinations, she closed her eyes and thought hard… until, at last, her mind came out with the spark of a weak idea.

"You are going to… freeze out there," she insisted, getting up again and taking one of her blankets away from the bed. Before Kenshin could do anything about it, she knelt at his side, and wrapped his small and thin body in it.

"You need this more than me," he protested, though he did not take it off, maybe not wanting to hurt her. In that moment, he opened his eyes, and Tomoe almost gasped as she saw the first glimpse of not only concern, but true kindness since they had returned to Kyoto. "You will be cold."

_I am always cold, however many are the blankets piled on top of me,_ she wanted to say. But she didn't.

"I'm sure I won't," she assured him instead. "To share with you gives me… warmth."

Unable to hide her emotions for once, she turned away brusquely in deep shame, and left. As she was laying back into her futon, however, Kenshin got up to follow her, discarding his katana in the wooden floor with a soft clang. His hand pressed her shoulder, and she was forced to turn back and meet his distressed eyes with her own, heavy with the long repressed tears that even now did not come… something for which, for once, she was grateful.

"You´re worried because of me," she muttered, lowering them in apology. It was the only thing she could have done in those circumstances, as she thought then with something strangely akin to despair. "Forgive me, I have no right to worry you. I… I already did it enough."

 "I understand," he cut her short, putting the blanket over her again. With a last lingering glance at her and at his handiwork, he turned away, blew off the candle and left.

_And, once more, she hadn´t asked…_

"One day," she heard from his corner in a last, faraway whisper, "I won't have blood on my hands at bedtime."

Tomoe widened her eyes, almost unable to believe what she had just heard_. _Soon, however, realization started to sink in her brain, and she shook her head nervously in the darkness. Such a great gap between what she had thought all along and his words… it was somehow impossible to imagine.

 "When you met me, I was already soiled. And now…in truth, it's through your forgiveness that I can stand myself at all," she whispered, almost wishing, almost fearing that she would hear her. If he did, though, he did not answer.

Or did not know what to answer?

_Better this way nevertheless…_

Slowly and carefully, in order not to make any noise that could alert him about what she was doing, the woman sat up on her bed, and took the blanket away again to put it aside on the wooden floor. Then, she lay back, and hugged herself tightly to suppress the shivers. If he blamed himself, shouldn't she blame herself doubly?

That night, somehow, and for the first time in all those weeks, she was able to sleep.

(the end)


End file.
